Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink will ‘ruin the sky’: stargazers
Outspoken billionaire inventor Elon Musk has already garnered a reputation as the bad boy of tech, by marketing potentially unsafe self-driving vehicles, getting involved in celebrity divorces and picking fights with web retail giant Jeff Bezos. Now, some scientists are calling his latest work, the SpaceX Starlink satellite internet launch, a nuisance for astronomers and stargazers alike.
Onlookers were treated to a spectacular light show during the May 23 launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, which sent a trail of 60 glowing satellites hurling into space one after another into low-Earth orbit. The satellites, the first of 12,000 total to be sent into space, will lay the groundwork — so to speak — for Starlink, Musk’s forthcoming global broadband internet service.
The 60 spacecrafts will eventually drift apart and will be most visible around dawn and dusk. On May 24, amateur satellite tracker Marco Langbroek filmed the group of satellites from the ground in the Netherlands as they passed through the sky in rapid succession.
It’s that twinkling “train,” much brighter than engineers had expected, that alarms experts, fearing that the satellites might interfere with cosmic research.
On his Twitter page, astronomer Alex Parker shared why the Starlink launch gives him “pause.”
“They’re bright, and there are going to be a lot of them,” he tweeted. “If SpaceX launches all 12,000, they will outnumber stars visible to the naked eye.”
In a reply to Parker, deputy director of the Astronomical Society Robery Massey suggests the satellites are a form of cosmic pollution. “Imagine the outcry at similar desecration of a terrestrial environment,” says Massey. “Is @elonmusk at all bothered?”
Ronald Drimmel of the Turin Astrophysical Observatory in Italy did not mince words, telling Forbes, “Starlink, and other mega constellations, would ruin the sky for everyone on the planet.”
Musk initially rebuked his critics, saying his satellite constellation would be hardly observable.
“There are already 4900 satellites in orbit, which people notice ~0% of the time,” tweeted Musk. “Starlink won’t be seen by anyone unless looking very carefully & will have ~0% impact on advancements in astronomy.”
In defense of his advancements, he told his critics, “We need to move telescopes to orbit anyway.”
He continued the thread, noting that his efforts to bring internet access to “billions of economically disadvantaged people” is for the “greater good” but said he will ensure that Starlink “has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy.”
“We care a great deal about science,” Musk said.
